Saturday, January 25, 2014

Mr Boscawen said he strongly believed the leader should also stand in Epsom.
"I believe we should pick our best and most experienced person as the leader and offer that person to the people of Epsom."
"I
believe if split that role we send mixed signals that the person we
think is good enough to be the leader, is not good enough to be the
Epsom candidate."
The last election showed that there was also a risk of conflict.
"We
had Don Brash come out and promote the liberalisation of marijuana and
while that may have had the support of five per cent of the population,
John Banks knew that was fatal for his campaign and strongly opposed
it."
The public then witness a conflict between the leader and the Epsom candidate.

Cannabis decriminalisation should be a peripheral issue for ACT.
Nevertheless denying a position is untenable. It looks dodgy. It's
permissible to state that members of a party are divided and until the
actual legislation came up, the way the party will vote is unknown. Or
that it would be a conscience vote and MPs would vote accordingly. It
shouldn't have created the problem that it did back in
2011.

But really. Claiming only 5 percent of the population supports liberalisation? This tells me John Boscawen is also anti. Why not just say so? I think ACT would reap more kudos for admitting they are divided on the issue BUT jointly and strongly committed to individual responsibility, low tax, and small government.

A new poll has found that almost two-thirds of New Zealanders are against legalising cannabis....another poll by UMR Research [2012] which asked a different question found last
month that only 35 per cent of New Zealanders wanted cannabis to stay
illegal, 17 per cent wanted it fully legalised and 46 per cent wanted it
"decriminalised".

Friday, January 24, 2014

Statistics NZ released a paper today about the effect of the recession on men and women.

Female labour force participation held up much better.

The main reason is that females work in public sector protected jobs - health, social and education sectors. Men work in the private sector - manufacturing and construction.
Of course, ultimately, the public sector jobs rely on revenues gathered from the private sector.

Worth thinking about the graph above next time you hear public sector employees moaning about conditions and pay rates. At least their security has been better than others enjoy.

The NZ Initiative doesn't offer any narrative and I haven't got any suffice to say it's an interesting fact that both opposition to adoption and access to abortion are feminist driven issues. Would you consider the story this graph tells a successful outcome of feminism?

If he wants to outdo National, perhaps this policy could make an appearance in Cunliffe's State of the Nation speech next Monday (reporting from the World Socialist Web Site):

Britain: Labour’s plan for licences another attempt to vilify teachers

By
Margot Miller
23 January 2014

In another bid to outdo the Tories in attacking the working class,
Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt recently announced that under a
Labour government, teachers working in England’s state schools would
have to be licensed every few years.
This would involve both continual assessments of a teacher’s
competence, as well as an external assessor making their judgement on
whether a teacher is fit to teach. Originally proposed by the previous
Labour government’s Education Secretary Ed Balls on a five-year cycle,
Labour intends to consult with the teaching trade unions in order to
implement teacher licensing.
According to Hunt, the latest proposal is intended to give teachers
the “same professional standing” as doctors and lawyers, “which means
re-licensing themselves which means continued professional development”.
He continued, “If you’re not a motivated teacher... passionate about
being in the classroom— you shouldn’t really be in this profession. So
if you’re not willing to engage in re-licensing to update your skills
then you really shouldn’t be in the classroom.”

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Contrary to what some believe, my long-term advocacy of welfare reform is not about being mean or punitive. It bothers me that HNZ is planning to take a hard line with tenants who have pets. According to the Otago Daily Times:

The SPCA says Housing New Zealand's plan to evict dogs
from state houses could be be "catastrophic'' for the animals
and community.
Documents released to the Otago Daily Times under the
Official Information Act revealed a plan to allow dogs to
live at a state house only "in exceptional circumstances''.
HNZ considered dogs a "barrier to independence'' that made it
difficult for tenants to "move on'', the documents revealed.
The SPCA said in a statement today that the policy seemed
like an overreaction to what was a minor problem with only 37
reported incidents out of an estimated 40,000 dogs.
"Such a policy will cause real distress and suffering to the
dogs and the owners who consider their pets as members of
their family,'' the statement said.
"The wholesale eviction of 40,000 dogs would be catastrophic
for the dogs and the community.''

Without doubt the crossover between beneficiary, known-to-CYF, and HNZ tenant is substantial.

And MSD knows that involvement with animals can be really beneficial for building empathy. About the Epuni Care and Protection Residence and animal visitation:

“Developing empathy is natural, but exposure to violence interrupts this
process. Contact with safe, loving others can begin to redress this
harm.” Sputnik’s planning to get his own dog one day. “He’ll be my best
friend, and I’ll call him Sputnik II.”

Ms Pivac [spokeswoman] said HNZ reviewed its dog policy in 2012 because it was
concerned about the seemingly high number of tenants who had dogs
without permission.
"At that stage we did consider taking a
harder line on dogs, but in the end we have ended up taking a pragmatic
approach to what is always a difficult topic for us.

John Key should just say his new education management scheme IS performance pay instead of denial.

Lots - if not most - people are paid on performance. If they don't perform they don't get paid. When they perform well they get paid more, even if that requires initiative on their own behalf eg a change of employer. When I take a commission I am explicit that if the commissioner isn't satisfied, they won't buy the painting. Key's scheme tells teachers and principals that if they are a cut above, there is now a new opportunity to get paid better. Good job too.

What's wrong with performance pay anyway? What's with the drive to protect mediocrity? It can't be fair whatever way you approach it.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Ex Labour leader, David Shearer has made some surprising comments in a column published in the NZ Herald today.

Despite sponsoring a private members bill to feed children in decile 1-3 schools he obviously has major misgivings about it.

Since my Food in Schools Bill - to provide food to lower-decile
schools - was drawn out of the Parliamentary ballot in October, I've
been rethinking this course of action.
My meetings with
principals, doctors, charities and communities have convinced me that
some important adjustments should be made to the bill.
My
research took me to a wonderful school, Owairaka District School, where
8-year-old students served me a lunch of vegetarian pizza from their own
pizza oven, salad from their garden, and muffins made with eggs from
their chickens and honey from their hives.
Owairaka is a decile 2
school but the children are kept nourished and learning through this
innovative garden-to-table programme.
But more critically, they
are picking up the lifetime skills of gardening and food preparation -
and they are doing it alongside family and community volunteers who also
benefit.

It's win, win, win - so much better than a hand-out for the
kids - and it raised a question I have grappled with since my bill was
drawn.
Is it right to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on to every low-decile school in the form of a food hand-out?

An important Labour MP questioning the hand-out philosophy? That won't sit well with his colleagues.

There's an old saying: give someone a fish and it will feed them for a
day; teach someone to fish and it will feed them for a lifetime.
Of
course, we all agree that no child should be hungry at school. But
what's missing is a programme that will not only fix that but also
improve nutrition and ensure self-reliance.
Before coming into politics I ran huge feeding programmes for starving kids, including one for 30,000 children in Somalia.
Without
that food, those children would have died. But the programme was always
designed to be temporary. As soon as the crisis passed, the families
moved on, relying on themselves.
My fear is that we will
institutionalise dependence through relying solely on a feeding
programme. We need to be far more forward-looking.

Surely Shearer has extended his thinking beyond the provision of food? Dependence is firmly institutionalised amongst certain groups in this country thanks to weekly cash hand-outs. Yet his party wants to make those hand-outs more generous in terms of availability and size.

And as it stands, the hand-outs aren't there to cushion until the "crisis [has] passed". For many they exist to fund a life of chosen dependence on other people's money. That institutionalisation then saps them of the will to take responsibility for things like feeding their children. They simply expect more hand-outs.

However, despite his misgivings Shearer continues:

My bill originally aimed to legislate for food to be available in
every decile 1, 2 and 3 school that wants it, so poorer communities can
have confidence their children won't be hungry at school.
That's a
start, but I'm going back to the drawing board so we can address the
issues of nutrition and encourage self-reliance. We have lost the basic
skills of how to garden and provide for ourselves.

As well as how to work and provide for ourselves.

Regarding feeding kids in school, Shearer's obvious conflict is shared by many. To solve it the child is separated from the parent. The failure of the parent is ignored in order to address the child's need. I think it's a mistake. It's only going to breed more reliance on the state. I fully expect that when Labour introduced the DPB somebody was arguing that is was necessary so single parents could ensure their childreen were fed.

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About Me

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.